Gulliver's Travels

Hey kids! Wanna guess what movie we are doing next? Let me give you some hints. It is from the 1930’s, the main character is animated via rotoscoping, and all the comedy relief sidekicks are named after adjectives and/or voiced by Pinto Colvig. If you said Snow White, you are absolutely incorrect. I am talking about Fleischer Studios’ Gulliver’s Travels which should be more appropriately be called I Can’t Believe It’s Not Snow White as it has next to squat in common with the novel it is based on. As a little back story, this movie came out in 1939 and was produced in less than two years. That is an insanely short amount of time for an animated movie, even by today’s standards. Fleischer Studios wanted to get in on the Snow White craze ASAP, and boy does it show. The copyright for it expired and was never renewed so feel free to look it up on You Tube…if you dare.

Enough beating around the bush, and let’s get on to the review. The movie opens up appropriately enough with Gulliver. His boat is caught in a storm and gets wrecked. He barely makes it out alive and collapses on the beach. And this is the most action you are going to see him do for the first half of the movie. I wish I was exaggerating, but I am not.

We then cut to Lilliput. Here’s a fun little fact for you: there was originally eight Dwarfs. That’s right. And roughly two weeks before they met Snow White they decided they had enough of their eighth member, Gabby. After losing his job at the diamond mine, he was forced to take the position of the town crier for the Lilliputians. Okay so I just made that story up, but what is true is that Gabby is voiced by Pinto Colvig, a.k.a. the voice of Grumpy and Sleepy. That just shows how much effort Dave and Max Fleischer put into making this masterpiece.

Anywho, Gabby is walking along and stumbles across Gulliver’s seemingly lifeless body. Once he realizes he is standing on a “giant”, he high tails it back to King Little’s castle. Unfortunately for Gabby, King Little is in the middle of signing a wedding contract with King Bombo of Blefuscu. Little’s daughter Glory is madly in love with Bombo’s son David. As they are working out the wedding plans, the subject of what song to play comes up. Little wants to play a song called “Faithful” and Bombo wants a song called “Forever”. Since they can’t make up their minds, Bombo calls off the wedding and declares war. I guess they were just too stupid to realize that they could have just played both songs. Then again they would probably fight over who gets to play what song first.

As Bombo storms out of the castle with Prince David he talks to his three spies Sneak, Snoop, and Snitch. I am not really sure who is who. I am also not sure what they were doing out there in the first place. Was Bambo expecting to get into a fight or was he just a bad dude to begin with? This was never really explained. As Bombo gets into his carriage he starts flashing back to stuff that happened five minutes ago. He remains true to his word that a war is on the way even though he feels bad for breaking his son’s heart.

Back with King Little, he is mumbling to himself about the upcoming war and Gabby is trying to tell him about the giant on the beach. The scene goes like this:

Little: *mumble, mumble* War *mumble, mumble*

Gabby: There’s a giant on the beach!

Little: Put a sock in it, Gabby.

(Repeat x100)

Finally after Dopey Gabby suggests that the “giant” might be a spy from Bombo, Little finally listens and has Gabby gather up all of Lilliput to go to the beach. They don’t see Gulliver since they were standing on him. When they realized what they were standing on, they construct an elaborate pulley system to pick him up and bring him back to the king. The construction scene goes on for literally ten minutes in a not so very long movie.

I am not sure who this guy is, but I feel that he would have made a better comedy relief character than Gabby. 

Once in Lilliput, King Little gets the bejeezus scared out of him by the size of Gulliver, but the other Lilliputians look on in awe. They marvel at the size of his pocket watch, telescope, and gun. When the latter accidentally goes off, Gulliver wakes up. He seemed to be unfazed that he was surrounded by little people. Everyone runs for cover, but Gabby is unable to get back into the castle. 

Squish him, Gulliver. Squish him like the annoying bug that he is. 

His nonchalant wonder doesn’t last too long as King Bombo’s men started to attack. Once they lay eyes on Gulliver, they retreat. The Lilliputians realize that Gulliver is a friendly giant that will protect them from King Bombo. They celebrate by making him new clothes as they sing “Whistle While You Work” “Hap-Hap-Happy Day”.

Back at King Bombo’s castle, he sends his pigeon, Twinkletoes out with a letter to his spies back in Lilliput. The letter tells them that they must destroy that giant. They are confused on how to do it until the shortest one (again I don’t know who is who) suggests they steal Gulliver’s gun and use it against him.

Meanwhile the Lilliputians have a dinner party for Gulliver where they is a lot of singing and dancing. Yeah it was pretty much just pointless filler.

We should be thankful they chose this route instead of having 30 Lilliputians stacked up in a trench coat. 

The next morning Sneak, Snoop, and Snitch are loading the gun, when the short guy tells him that Gulliver is coming. They hide the gun and dowsed out the light as fast as possible. They get the ingenious idea of burying the lantern in hay. This in turn causes the house to catch on fire. Gulliver puts it out with some water. We should be thankful that he didn’t drop his drawers and pee it out like Jack Black did.

Later that night Gabby is in his room and he hears someone singing “Forever”. He knows that is King Bombo’s song so he calls the guards. It turns out it was just Prince David singing to Princess Glory (Bombo's son and Little's daughter since I know you completely forgot about them), but they have a sword fight nevertheless. It was a very pointless sword fight that went on for way too long and repeated the same unfunny gag where Gabby loses his sword roughly 147.8657 times. Gulliver shows up and takes the Prince and Princess away. Off screen they explain their situation on how they can’t get married. Gulliver gets the idea that the two should sing both of their songs together. Why no one thought of this in the first place is beyond me.

While this is going on, King Bombo and the spies were communicating back and forth with Twinkletoes. When Twinkletoes was taking a break, the demented Dopey from Hell shows up and reads the letter saying that King Bombo was attacking at dawn. The Lilliputians set out to defend themselves. They get Gulliver to join them. Meanwhile the spies kidnap Gabby for some reason. I shouldn’t really complain however. It is a good thing he is gone.

Down at the beach, Gulliver demands that King Little and King Bombo need to stop. He pulls Bambo’s ships in by their anchors. As he does that the baddies are loading his gun and ready to fire. Have no fear, as Prince David shows up in the nick of time to divert the bullet. But unfortunately he falls to his doom. As Gulliver lectures the two kings on how there stupidity caused them the death of David, he comes back to life. Everyone starts to sing a hybrid of “Faithful” and “Forever”. They build Gulliver a boat so he can ride off into the sunset.

The End

Side Note: This movie spun off a series of cartoons staring Gabby. They are also in the public domain so if you have some time to spare and don’t value your sanity look them up. I am not sure if there was a demand for these, or if Max and Dave Fleischer assumed that people wanted this just like they wanted Walt Disney to do a Dopey spin off. In either case I do remember my family having a couple of VHS tapes with public domain cartoons on them and there were at least a couple Gabby episodes. I am not sure if this is a false memory or not, but I remember kind of liking them because Gabby reminded me of Dopey. Also there were a shorter lived series starring Twinkletoes and the three spies. Not sure if they are in the public domain, but my hunch says that they are.

The Pros:

• I guess it wasn't as bad as I made it sound. It is okay for mindless entertainment. I honestly feel that most of this movies problems can be solved with one or two rewrites of the script. 
• Some of the music was pretty cool, especially at the end.

The Cons:

• The pacing is an absolute mess. The title character is unconscious for the first half of the movie, nearly one third of the movie is either the two kings planning the wedding or the Lilliputians moving Gulliver, so much pointless filler, etc
• The characters are weak. No one was fleshed out enough to make you want to care about them.
• If you thought the rotoscoping in Snow White looked dated and weird, you ain't seen nothing yet.
• It was obvious Fleischer Studios was working outside of their comfort zone. Paramount forced them to be like Disney instead of being themselves. I heard that originally this was going to be a feature length Popeye cartoon. That sounds a heck of a lot better than this.

I give it ** out of *****. 

Brave Little Toaster

This is a special little nostalgic movie for me. Just for those of you who are not in the know, this is a movie released in 1987. Although it isn’t from Disney it was played on the Disney channel quite often and distributed on VHS by them. It also has several folks that later went to Pixar such as John Lasseter and Joe Ranft working on it. It also has two DTV sequels from the '90's called Goes to Mars and To the Rescue. As of this writing they were both available on Netflix and I don't recommend either one. I remember watching this movie, however, a lot when I was little. I also remember taking my toys to reenact scenes from the movie. My mom even bought me an old toaster from a garage sale and painted a face on it to add to the collection. I thought to myself: “would a movie like this hold up?” I mean what a five-year-old loves and what is good to an adult are often times two wildly different things. It was because of that I decided that this movie was worth reviewing.

It opens up with rather ominous music playing in an abandoned cabin in the early morning. An alarm radio goes off. Someone from off screen yells to keep it down and shines a light. Then this person reveals himself: he is a living lamp (named Lampy). Dun dun dun. And the radio is alive too. Dun dun dun. That’s right. All the appliances in the cabin are alive. We are later introduced to Blanky the electric blanket, Kirby the vacuum, the nameless air conditioner, and, of course, the titular toaster.

When they wonder what they are going to do that day, Kirby says they are going to do what they do every day: Try to take over the world Do chores. To make it more fun Radio plays “Tutti Frutti” by Little Richard. As they are happily working, Blanky stops abruptly and stares off into space. He quietly whispers “A car”. That is the cue for the other guys get a bunch of chairs stacked up so Blanky can climb into the attic and look out the window. As Toaster asks if it is “The Master”, Blanky gets sucked into a fantasy where The Master and his parents were coming home. Blanky snaps back to reality when the car just drives on past the cabin.

I wonder why my appliances don't come to life when I am gone and clean. I must own some real lemons

The Master is the bespectacled little boy that owned them. Or at least he owned Blanky, Lampy, and Radio. I am not sure why Toaster and Kirby think the kid is going to be dying to see them again. Oh well. Blanky and Kirby start arguing about whether or not The Master will ever come back, the previously mentioned air conditioner turns on, laughing manically. He essentially calls the other guys idiots for thinking The Master will ever return. When Toaster and Kirby tell him that he is just jealous because he is stuck in the wall and The Master never played with him, he has a heart attack and dies.

After that charming episode, they hear another car. Only this time it is really close. Excited that it might just be their Master, they get into place. To their horror, they realize that this car belongs to a Realtor that is hammering in a “For Sale” sign. As the others cry, Toaster gets on a soapbox (literally) and says that he is going out to find The Master and they should join him. (Just as a side note I am going to be referring to Toaster with male pronouns. I understand that this is a controversial topic for many as Toaster was treated as a male in the movie, but has a woman’s voice and was referred to as female in an interview with the director. If you are in the “Toaster is a girl” camp, you have been warned.) Slowly, one by one, he convinces the others to join him.

After about half a dozen hare-brained plans from Lampy on how they should get around, they settle on riding an office chair with Kirby pulling and a car battery for power. They head out into the great unknown. The next morning, they come to another clearing, only this one is filled with animals! And they are doing weird stuff like singing, synchronized swimming, and making funny faces at Toaster. I would cry “big lipped alligator moment” but I feel that is a bit cliché. Toaster runs away from all of this madness only to stumble upon a flower. The flower falls in love with its own reflection (narcissist!)  When Toaster tells it that it is only a reflection, it withers and dies. When that second big-lipped alligator moment was over, he saves Blanky from being kidnapped by mice and suddenly decides it was time to leave.

Shouldn't the fridge be alive too? 

They enter into a dark forest, with ominous music playing. That can’t be a good sign. Fortunately, Blanky makes himself into a tent to protect the other guys as they rest. After they all go to sleep, Toaster has a nightmare about The Master being taken away in smoke, a demonic clown firefighter, giant forks coming for him, all ending with him falling into a bathtub. Upon awakening, he sees a thunderstorm a-brewin’. Blanky gets carried away in the wind, and the battery they had attached to their chair has gone dead meaning they are trapped. Lampy makes a heroic sacrifice by using himself as a lightning rod to recharge the battery. I don’t think that would work in real life, but what the hay. Don’t worry about Blanky. Once the storm cleared, they saved him from a tree.

The guys get to a waterfall which leads to Kirby having a panic attack. Once he got snapped back to normal, the come up with a plan to cross the waterfall by tying their cords together and throwing Toaster to the other side. Toaster has a panic attack himself and accidentally drops the cord and they all (except for Kirby) fall to their doom. Kirby plunges down the waterfall to save his friends (who surprisingly all float despite the fact they are made out of metal). The river ends at a swamp, where they all fall into quicksand, only to be saved by an appliance repair man named Elmo who happened to be driving through the swamp with his big wheel truck for some unexplained reason.

Elmo takes them to his store filled with all sorts of horrors such as loose motors and cords out for sale. When Elmo leaves they are greeted by all the appliances that live in the store, and they learn the horrible truth: Elmo is a psychotic madman who takes appliances apart. Of course to us he is just doing his job, to them he is Hannibal Lector. After watching Elmo brutally murder a blender for its motor, they come up with a plan to save themselves by pretending to be a monster. After scaring the bejeezus out of Elmo they take off in the baby buggy they stole from him.

Now we finally get to see The Master in real life. His name is Rob and he isn't a little kid anymore. In fact he is heading off for college. He is telling his mom that he and his girlfriend (Chris) are heading out for the cabin to pick up the old appliances to take to his dorm. When they leave the apartment, all of Rob’s stuff comes to life and are in a panic. How dare Rob bring some old junk to his dorm instead of them!

We cut back to Toaster and company and they have finally made it to the big city. With the help of a phone book and a friendly traffic light, they make it to Rob’s apartment. There they are greeted by Rob’s appliances who look like they are plotting something that isn’t exactly wholesome. They also reconnect with Rabbit Ears, the old TV that used to live in the cabin with them. The new guys break into a song about how they are on the cutting edge of technology circa 1980's. After that horribly dated bit, our heroes get kicked out the window and into a dumpster.

Now we just need to find the Pizza Planet truck and the character voiced by John Ratzenberger. 

Back at the cabin, Rob is trying to show Chris about how much fun he had as a kid, but she doesn’t believe him. The place is a dump (remember all the wacky hijinks that happened before the guys set off). Rob also realizes that most of the appliances are gone. He does notice the broken air conditioner. Rob fixes him because he apparently has the skills of a repairman. When Rob leaves, Air Conditioner comes to life and cries tears of joy. He was finally used by The Master. Rob is sad however as he had his heart set on bringing his old stuff from the cabin to college.

Toaster and the rest of the gang are at the dump watching old cars accepted their fate by being smashed into cubes. Back at Rob’s apartment, Rob and Chris are decided on where to go shopping for a vacuum and stuff. Rabbit Ears is desperately trying to get their attention by running faux commercials with the dump’s address on them. After what seemed like forever, he finally gets their attention. So Rob and Chris head out to what they think is an appliance store but is actually the dump. For some reason the super magnet at the dump is hellbent on destroying our heroes by picking them up and putting them on the conveyor belt as much as he (she, it?) can. When Rob notices his old stuff on the conveyor belt he picks them up and all is well.

Well not really. He grabbed up Lampy, Radio, Kirby, and Blanky (Toaster jumped off before Rob could get to him). The evil magnet came back sucking up everything including Rob. He gets put on the conveyor belt and covered by junk so he couldn’t move. He is headed for the smasher and there is only one thing Toaster could do: sacrifice himself by plunging into the gears to stop the conveyor belt. The smasher stops inches above Rob who can only sigh. Somehow off screen Chris must of pulled the junk off of him and he must of realized his toaster was mashed into the machine’s gears because they are back at the apartment. Rob fixes up Toaster as good as new, and loads everyone into his car and heads off for college.

The Pros:

• Fully fleshed out 3-dimensional characters (or at least the main characters)
• An amazing soundtrack and score
• It was a “quest” movie, and I am a sucker for “quest” movies.

The Cons:

• The animation can get pretty sloppy at times. Since the budget was only around $2 million I will let this one slide.
• There is a huge plot hole: It was established they need a battery to move, but they lose it during the waterfall incident and never had any problems since.

Overall I give it ***** out of *****.

Thumbelina

This movie has some special nostalgic value for me. It was the first movie I ever saw in theaters. My mom, my late grandmother, and I were the only three there. I am not making that up. In hindsight that should have been a clue to get the heck out of Dodge, but I was only four at the time so I thought movie theaters were supposed to be like that. Because of this I decided that if I ever have kids, I am going to make sure the first movie they see in theaters is that year’s Disney canon feature, or Pixar, or something that would be remembered by the general public for longer than five minutes. That’s enough tales of yesteryear, and now on with the review.

The movie opens up, curiously enough, in Paris. Since this is based on a story by a Danish author, shouldn’t they be in Denmark? I guess I will let this slide, as the movie’s location is the least of its problems. We see an obnoxious singing bird with an equally obnoxious French accent flying through the sky and getting a little bit too close to the camera. As he flies through a horribly dated CG model of the city he sings about how to “Follow Your Heart” whatever the heck that means.

This character is named Jacquimo and he will serve as the story’s narrator. Hurray! He flies into a library and watches a tiny girly-pink book of Thumbelina open. He goes through the story’s prologue. There is this lady (who doesn’t have a name) whose biological clock is ticking away. Since she has no husband and having one night stands until she gets pregnant is out of the question, she visits a good witch that gives her a seed. When this seed is planted, a flower grew and a tiny teenage girl voiced by Jodi Benson popped out. Totally unfazed by this, the woman names her Thumbelina. The good news is that the nameless mother doesn’t have to deal with dirty diapers, spit up, and crying at 3 a.m. The bad news is that she is going to get all of the hormones and none of the cute.

The next day (?) she is on the farm with her mom and all the ugly farm animals sing the first of many annoying songs this movie has in store (seriously this song used “big” to rhyme with itself three times). When that totally pointless scene ended, we see the mother reading a bedtime story to Thumbelina. She becomes completely fascinating with the fairies she was hearing about, and asking her mother questions like “why do they have wings?” and “have you ever seen a fairy before?” When her mother sends her to bed, Thumbie asks to leave the book open. She then sings, yet another stupid song, about how she wishes that she will meet the man of her dreams soon. She follows it up by asking herself “I wonder if there are such things as fairies”.

What a coinkydink, there are fairies! And they are flying around makes to plants change colors for the fall, just like in Fantasia! We see the Fairy King and Queen and they notice their son is missing from his butterfly steed. The King is not too concerned, for some reason, but the Queen is. She knows he is off riding his bumble bee again. Because nothing says “bad boy” better than riding on a bumble jacket. Prince Cornelius happens to ride past Thumbelina’s window and thinks she is so beautiful he has to go inside and invite her for a ride on his bee. They break into (surprise, surprise) another song, only this time the song is mediocre instead of god-awful. They ride through a horribly animated CG pond where she blows a kiss to a toad dressed as a harlequin. When they get out of ear shot, the toad turns to his mother and says “I love her.” Prince Cornelius gets her safely home, gives her his ring, and promises to see her tomorrow so she can meet his parents (a little earlier for that, isn’t it). He leaves and she goes to bed.

This dude broke an entry and vandalized her book. Seems like a jerk to me.

Looks like paper cut outs on a bunch of plastic.

Oh snap, what is this? Someone breaks in and kidnaps Thumbelina as she is snoozing in her walnut shell bed. The family dog, Hero, wakes up and tries to stop the attacker. This leads to a Tom & Jerry style slapstick filled chase. Unfortunately Hero is unable to get Thumbelina back. The next morning the mother and all the ugly farm animals are sad about their loss. Prince Cornelius shows up with a buttload of gifts for Thumbelina (seriously if some guy I knew for a day was giving me that much stuff I would take that as a serious sign of desperation). He sees that her room has been ransacked and he asks Hero what had happened. Hero explains that she has been kidnapped by a toad. The Prince heads off to go find her. Did I forget to mention that Hero can’t talk? Well he can’t and Prince Corny can understand dog speak. So, yeah…

Is is just me or does this fellow look like the forgotten love child of Yosemite Sam and Goofy?

Back at the ‘80’s CG swamp, Thumbelina just wakes up, because apparently being kidnapped didn’t shake her up enough to keep her awake. She is greeted by a Spanish-speaking toad with the hair of Marie Antoinette and the melons of Jessica Rabbit. She introduces her three clownish sons. Somehow Thumbelina ends up telling Mama Toad that she is going to marry the Prince of the Fairies. As you can probably imagine this leads to another annoying musical number about how she shouldn’t marry him, but this time it starts with some very intelligent words from our heroine: “Oh dear”. Mama Toad wants Thumbelina to marry her son, Grundel, so she can perform in their traveling show and make some big time moolah. For some reason they leave her on a lily pad as Mama Toad and her sons take off in a boat. Not the smartest move in the world, but then again they are animals that wouldn’t recognize a fly unless it was buzzing around so we can’t expect too much from them.

Oh, no. Remember that annoying Jacquimo from the intro was reading the book to us? He’s back! I am not sure if we are supposed to believe this story is based on “true” events or if he is just reading a self-insert fanfic of his. He flies (?!) underwater to detach the lily pad from the bottom of the pond. She floats along the pond and comes to “giant” waterfall (which I am sure in reality is only a foot tall). Since Jacquimo is too stupid to pick her up and carry her to safety, she has to rely on a bunch of annoying looking bugs and a fish with a funny moo-stash to save her.

Once she is saved she longs to find her way back home, only she has no idea where she is at. I will give you three guesses on what that prompts. If you said another song, you are right. Remember that song Jacquimo was singing at the beginning? Of course you don’t. He begins singing the full version of “Follow Your Heart” right now. This honestly went on for way too long.

Back at the Fairy Kingdom, Cornelius is pleading with his father to delay the start of winter so he can look for Thumbelina. Apparently in this universe autumn lasts only one day. Either that or we are expected to believe Thumbelina has been gone for three months already. The Prince rides off on the search for his fiancée he knew for less than 24 hours.

After that very brief scene, we are back at the pond. This time it is traditionally animated because I guess the movie got sick of its own pointless CG. Grundel is sad that Thumbelina had left him. His brothers show up to tease him about how he is going to be the laughing stalk of the pond and how his woman dumped him for a fairy prince. He is determined to get her back and storms off.

And after that very brief scene, we see Thumbelina merrily skip along with three bug children with all of a sudden a beetle with the voice of Gilbert Gottfried jumps out and says “Heya Toots!” Just as a side note, I distinctly remember being in the theaters and shouting “That’s Iago!” Remember there was nobody in the theater other than me, my mom, and my grandma so I could yell out whenever I felt like it. Anyways, back to business, this beetle gets uncomfortably close to Thumbelina, kissing her arm, and feeling her up with his antenna. They make a deal if he flies her to the top of the tree (so she can see her house), she would go to the Beetle Ball with him. He tricks her and just takes her straight there.

"Aflac!" 

 At the Beetle Ball, one of the most ungodly annoying songs is playing. Trust me; just hit the fast forward button on this one unless you want it to be stuck in your head for the next six to eight weeks. Anyways Thumbelina is dressed as a bug and everyone in the audience is going ga ga over her. Even the girls want her. Her bug suit comes off and everyone reacts with disgust and horror. She is upset because she thinks she is ugly. *Fades to black*

The bug children she was with earlier are running to get help from someone, presumably from somebody who is old enough to use the big kid potty. Then Grundel hops down and blocks their path. The youngest kid spills the beans on where the Beetle took Thumbelina. The kids manage to escape and Grundel knows he has to go after the Beetle.

I am pretty sure that kid on the right is Jiminy Cricket in drag. 

After that incident takes place, Thumbelina is outside crying over the fact a bunch of insects called her ugly. Jacquimo shows up and tells her that as long as the Prince thinks she is beautiful than that is all that really matters. Instead of asking him to fly her home like a person of normal intelligence would do, she asks him to look for the Vale of the Fairies where Cornelius lives. It is nighttime so they just go to bed. The next morning Jacquimo asks an anthropomorphic rabbit that is being chased by an anthropomorphic fox where the Vale of the Fairies is. When both of them tell him screw off, he gets thrown in a sticker bush and gets a thorn stuck in his wing. He is still able to fly but he knows he has to hurry because winter is coming.

We then see Cornelius calling out her name as he rides along on his bee. The bee leads him to where all the ugly bug people are hanging out. The same kid with the big mouth tells him what has happened to Thumbelina. He rides off to find her, but he just happens to ride past Grundel and Beetle having a little tiff. They come to the conclusion that if they capture the Prince and use him as bait she would come to them. Grundel tears off the Beetle’s wings and says that he can only have them back if he comes back with the Prince. The Beetle sets off but winter has suddenly begun and everything is covered in ice and snow.

Cornelius is riding along when his bee gets pelted by a hail stone. He crashes into a pond and gets frozen into a block of ice with only a finger (and not that finger) poking through. It just so happens that Beetle and his friends are walking by and they see him. They cut him out and bring him back to Grundel. By a total coincidence they go past an old shoe that Thumbelina was sleeping in. She cries as she worries that she will never get back home. The scene transitions to her mother (better late than never I always say) singing this film’s 100^th crappy song. Honestly, it wasn’t that bad and it was nice to see what her mother again. At least she is a normal human and not a butt-ugly animal like 99% of this film’s characters are.

After that three minute scene is done with, we see Thumbelina waking up in the home of a mouse. And this is an annoying as heck mouse. Ms. Field Mouse knows a lot about Thumbelina and blurts out that the prince is “dead” in a very insensitive manner. This gets the attention of the Beetle who is spying on the house from outside. Ms. Field Mouse thinks it would be good to take Thumbelina to see Mr. Mole down the tunnel. Mousie tells Thumbelina to tell a story to Mr. Mole. Not any old story, but a sad love story. And don’t just tell it, but sing it. One bad musical number later, Mr. Mole decides to show them what he found when he was out on his daily stroll: a dead bird. Huzzah! Break out the champagne and party hats, ‘cause Jacquimo is dead! As Thumbelina mourns the loss of her fallen friend, Mr. Mole turns to Ms. Field Mouse. He tells her how he wishes he had a wife because he is “lonely for companionship” (eww). Ms. F.M. is flattered by this because she thinks he is referring to her. When she found out he was talking about Thumbelina, she only agreed when he said he will pay her handsomely.

The Beetle brings the Princesicle to Grundel. He is actually relieved that he is “dead” and is pleased to know that the Beetle knows where Thumbelina is. The two leave the frozen Cornelius pop behind as they head off for Mr. Mole’s. The bug children show up to build a fire to thaw out the Prince.

Back to the Mouse House, we see Mrs. Field Mouse trying to convince Thumbelina that she is the perfect match for Mr. Mole. Then comes the worst song ever in the whole history of mankind: “Marry the Mole”. This song is so bad that it won a Golden Raspberry Award. So far it is the only time an animated movie ever won this dubious prize, and it is only one out of three to ever be nominated in any category (The Hunchback of Notre Dame was nominated for “worse written film grossing over $100 million” and Eight Crazy Nights was nominated for Adam Sandler as Worst Actor).

If anyone puts on a pin cushion and begins to sing a song about marrying an insectivore who is old enough to be your grandfather: run. Run fast, run far.  

Assuming you survived that musical number with the majority of your brain cells intact, we cut back to Jacquimo’s lifeless corpse. But unfortunately he isn’t dead at all, he was just knocked out. She tells him that she is going to marry the mole since her prince is “dead”. She pulls the thorn out of his wing and is somehow as good as new. Meanwhile with the insect preschoolers, they build a fire to thaw out Cornelius. At the Mole’s place Thumbelina is getting married to him. When it gets to be her turn to say “I do” she shouts “Never!” and storms out. Just then Grundel jumps down and tells her to marry him. Then the Beetle shows up with a “Heya toots!” Fortunately for our titular character Corny shows up in the nick of time to save her from the menagerie of grotesque animals chasing after her. As she makes her escape to above ground, he falls to his doom while fighting Grundle.

I will not tell a lie. I was hoping that finger was going to snap off.

I guess the Pippi Longstocking look is in this year.

This is as much testosterone this movie ever has.

Above ground, she finds Jacquimo who takes her to the Vale of the Fairies. It looks like nothing out of the ordinary, but the French turkey makes her sing. Her singing was the key that unlocks springtime, and to the surprise of no one, Corny Cornelius is still alive. They kiss and she grows her very own wings. We see their wedding with the fairies, her mother, the ugly farm animals, and the bugs attending. They ride off on his bee, and they lived happily ever after. The End.

"They grow up so fast. It seems like only three days ago she hatched."

The Pros:

• Nothing. I got nothing.

The Cons:

• More obnoxious sidekicks than you can shake a stick at.
• Each musical number was more annoying and/or more pointless than the last.
• Very obvious Disney cash in.
•  Horribly dated CG effects. If they look this bad now, they must have not looked that great to begin with.
• Way too many plot holes. Like how did the toads know where she lived? Why do the seasons only last one day? Why didn't that stupid bird fly her home in the first place?
• The excessive use of Disney voice actors. We had Ariel in the title role, King Triton as the Fairy King, and Iago as the Beetle. There may have been others I am missing.

Overall I give it * out of *****.